150 Fort Carson Soldiers come home

A 9-month deployment came to an end as 150 soldiers of the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team of the 4th Infantry Division returned home to Fort Carson on Saturday afternoon.

The 1st ABCT was deployed to the Middle East in February to work with and train members of the Kuwaiti Armed Forces. A crowd of hundreds of family members greeted them as they returned.

Service comes with sacrifices of all kinds, many of the 150 soldiers were fathers who met their children for the first time on Saturday.

"I'm meeting my son for the first time, he was born while I was away and the kids all went to school and I missed all that fun stuff," explained Sgt. Zachary Shaffer, a father of three. "It's great to be home."

Many others found children who were growing up too fast. Sgt. Benjamin Simpson found that you can miss a lot in 9-months when you have two young daughters.

"I left and she just couldn't even walk and now she's doing everything," Sgt. Simpson said while holding his youngest daughter. "It's really phenomenal just to see the difference in them and how much they've become little people, it's just amazing, it feels great though, my wife did a great job."

With the government shutdown still ongoing it's easy to have a negative attitude about the state of the country these days. But, Saturday's homecoming served as a reminder that the United States is still a great place to live and come back to.